Unreciprocated
by thir13enth
Summary: Oneshot. Challenge from Kuruk. Team Gai versus the Sand Siblings. Neji watches Temari.


**So Kuruk (he's a good writer, go check him out!) and I put ourselves on a suicidal challenge.**

**Here, he presents me my brain stimulation:**

**Requirements: The characters must be in the middle of a dangerous mission, under attack. Must use the words: recalcitrant, xenophilistic, jazz, treachery, bathtub. The phrase "the guy with the funky eyes is trying to devour my soul, man!" must be used in dialogue. At some point in the story, one of the main characters must notice something he/she never noticed about the other one.**

**Restrictions: Kakashi is not a character in this. (-DAMMIT!)**

**Enjoy. Because I made his challenge even harder.**

**Midori Fujiwara**

* * *

"God dammit," Tenten said, "I need to get into a bathtub full of ice when this is over. It's too hot, and I don't have the patience to just be waiting around for some action."

"Don't get too arrogant, we're in the middle of the desert. This is their land, and they have more tricks up their sleeves than we can even imagine," Neji replied.

Lee looked back at his teammates, who gave him a cue to just go and deliver the blows. Lee rogered it and went straight into his taijutsu, flipping several times before reaching Temari. Temari had originally planned to blow him away but she decided on another plan. In the meantime, Neji and Tenten had gone after Kankuro.

Thank god Gaara wasn't with them.

And actually, he was the reason why they were fighting.

It wasn't expected for the Sand Country to commit treachery, not after a long alliance with them that was sure to be sealed because of Oroochimaru's previous raid during the Chuunin exams. Apparently Gaara had decided that he no longer needed the Fire Country's aid. Gaara sought something more in the alliance with Ocean Country, who was not at all in favor of the Fire Country, only because Zabuza hadn't been taken care of quite as effectively as the Mist Village wanted.

So the xenophilistic attitude of Gaara decided to let loose the link between the familiar countries. Spies had uncovered the secret messages relaying between the Ocean and Sand Countries.

There, Team Gai came in.

Temari allowed Lee to get to close combat with her, and swung her fan in front of her defensively once she thought he was close enough. "You just don't know what you got yourself into." And she swung out a smaller fan, tipped with steel. Lee kicked himself back, and then found himself flying back because of Temari's powerful wind creation with her signature larger fan. She stood there, refusing to run for her opponent when she could just simply blow him away each time he tried to make contact.

Fortunately, she had known the Leaf Village ninja well enough to know what each of them specialized in.

Lee was taijutsu. Tenten had a whole stockload of weapons. And Neji used Snake Eyes.

Easy.

She watched her brother Kankuro get trapped into a close combat fight with the Hyuuga. Crap, Kankuro couldn't control his puppets with so much interference…at least this time, his real body was in the cavity of the puppet strapped on his back, rather than just on his back.

"Kankuro! Get your jazz together!" Temari said, and then checked to see where her opponent was. She flipped over her fan to avoid a kick coming in from the air, and then blocked a few more kicks. She wasn't good at taijutsu, just like her brother, and she knew she wouldn't be able to keep up with Lee's quick movements.

Lee knocked her in the side of the head and she fell to the ground, turning into sand.

Lee realized it was just a sand clone, and forced himself to jump high enough to cross over Temari's large fan. He left behind a few explosives, but Temari was hidden nowhere near her fan. Lee glanced around to wonder where the hell she went but to no avail. He was tapped on the back however, and whipped around with a roundhouse kick just in time to see Temari quickly duck, throwing shuriken up against his leg. A rip of fabric and Lee grimaced.

But both of them knew well enough that she had only just tore apart the fabric that kept the weights to his leg. Now one of his legs was free of the burden.

Temari cursed.

* * *

Neji continued to push Kankuro back, refusing to use any special techniques on him just yet. He wasn't yet sure where Kankuro really was, because the last time at the Chuunin exams, Kankuro had been playing completely with his puppet while he was the one strapped to the back. Neji had told Tenten this before, and she already had her scrolls ready.

Neji quickly activated his Snake Eyes, and in the meantime while he was being distracted, Tenten took over the fighting, throwing out a scroll. Hundreds of weapons materialized and Tenten expertly aimed them all at Kankuro—actually his back—without misfire. Kankuro must have realized Tenten was already suspecting that Kankuro was not in his true body, and he swung the puppet on his back off him and threw it up at Tenten.

From the pack, another puppet cackled, eating air and reaching Tenten before she realized that it wasn't Kankuro's real body.

Neji stopped any kind of offense with a few throws of kunai, letting Tenten land back on the ground safely.

Neither of them were quite ready for another one of Kankuro's puppets being under the sand.

* * *

Temari leaped back to avoid an unstoppable Lee, who suddenly attained quite a bit more speed. She never did understand why he even burdened himself with the weights even in fights. He wasn't giving it his all? Was he in this way mocking her?

Oh she'd show him then.

Two swipes of her large fan created sharp blades of winds that not only knocked Lee out, but also threw him back against a large rock sticking up out of the sand. Lee groggily stood right back up, not letting any fall allow Temari to gain advantage of him.

But to his surprise, she didn't even take one step closer to him. She simply stood there, with her fan poised behind her. She stood in a stance suggestive of another fan swipe.

Lee didn't like how Temari was making Lee do all the running work while she would simply swipe and then knock him off track. He wanted her to at least come after him or something in a challenge.

However, Lee noticed a puppet rising out of the sand between both Neji and Tenten. He noticed Tenten jumping up and producing two scrolls.

Recognizing her Twin Dragon jutsu, Lee knew that he couldn't let Temari blow Tenten's plan away, and quite literally.

And hence, acting with his ever present recalcitrant self, Lee ran forward, to distract Temari from ruining Tenten's show.

* * *

Neji looked up, seeing Tenten in that pose before her ultimate jutsu, and he made sure to clear out of the way. He decided to join Lee against Temari for that quick second, and stole away from Kankuro's puppet just in time to distract him and allow Tenten to complete her hand sign sequence. He still hadn't discovered any sources of chakra yet that could lead them to the real Kankuro, but it was a priority and Neji kept his senses open.

Tenten swirled both scrolls around her in her leap. The scrolls took the form of paper dragons and then unleashed a cloud of weaponry, hurling all down at the speed of gravity. She looked over at Temari's fan, and hoped that she hadn't noticed. Just in case, Tenten had put a clone in her place. Her real self was hiding behind the rock that Lee was just blown against the few seconds earlier.

She hoped her teammates were a good enough distraction, because her Twin Dragon jutsu took a lot of scroll writing to do, and she wanted it to be worth it.

Temari noticed Neji advancing in on her from the other side and wondered why he had redirected himself. She noticed Tenten high in the air with her—

That jutsu!

Temari cursed, and not caring that Lee and Neji were coming at her at the same time, she threw her wind up and forward to protect Kankuro, who she was sure was inside the puppet.

Not long after that, Tenten's attack was deflected and all of Team Gai seemed disappointed after that.

But Temari noticed that Tenten had learned, since a shadow clone dissipated into the air where all her deflected weapons were.

She was too late to block off the two taijutsu fighters that were coming at her.

She took both their blows, and collapsed onto the hot sand. She got up as soon as she could, but she was overpowered by Tenten, who had appeared from apparently nowhere. She felt blade hit skin, and warm blood flowed over her cheekbone. To retaliate against both Tenten and Lee, Temari whipped out her metal bladed fan, but looked back at her brother Kankaro to see how he was doing against the Hyuuga.

"Kankuro! Defend your own damn self!"

"How can I when the guy with funky eyes is trying to devour my soul, man?" he yelled back. Indeed, he was being taijutsu-dominated by the Hyuuga.

Temari couldn't let her brother just get beat up like that. Groaning, she threw several shuriken at Neji's way, enhancing the force behind her with a quick wind from her fan. She allowed Lee to kick her in the gut and fell over while Tenten grabbed her by the collar to pull her back up for another kick.

* * *

Neji was surprised that Temari had taken damage just to protect her brother.

He wouldn't do that in any circumstance.

Fate was fate. What happened, would happened.

There was no stop or end to the flow of events.

And whether or not it was resentment for being the subordinate, he wouldn't even raise a finger to help out Hinata.

* * *

**Hoping to do another challenge again,**

**Midori Fujiwara**


End file.
